Organic search is really important for your website as that's how people find
you through search engines. I'm Carolyn James from Website Insights and my articles
and videos aim to show you how to use data to make online marketing decisions confidently.
You can get access to data about how your website is showing up in Google search through a tool
called Google Search Console. All you need to do is prove ownership of your website to access this.
I would always recommend that once you have access to Google Search Console, you link this to your
Google Analytics account so that you can see all the data in one place in Google Analytics.
In this video, I'm going to run you through the steps you'll need to take to get ownership of your
Google Search Console account and get access to all this data. The first option, and possibly the
easiest, is if somebody else in your organization already has owner access to your Google Search
Console property, they can set you up as an owner. In this case, you will be a delegated owner. This
will be all you need, unless at some point in the future that person loses their ownership
and then you will too. So the better thing is to become a verified owner. Here's what you need to
do for that. Go to search.google.com forward slash search console and you'll come to this screen.
Or if you don't see this at first, go to the hamburger menu at the top left and click 'Add
Property'. In this screen, you choose one of two pathways for verifying ownership.
I recommend that you choose the one on the right, URL Prefix. There are two reasons for
this - first if you use this method you will be able to link Search Console to Google Analytics.
The other reason is that this pathway offers five different options for verifying your ownership of
your website, and you're more likely to find one of these that's easy for you.
For this method, where it says 'Enter URL', you'll need to enter the complete URL for your website,
including the URL prefix and the dub dub dub - whatever applies to your website.
I've typed my website address and then I click continue. The system then checks whether the
logged in Google account is verified for the site. Next you'll see this screen, which gives me
five options for verifying ownership. The first option, which you see here, involves downloading
an html file from here and uploading it to your website. You may have to ask your
web administrator to do this if you don't have access. Each option has a verify button within it
so, after you've completed any of the required actions, you click on the verified button to
complete the process. The second option involves copying a meta tag and pasting it into the header
section of your site's home page. If you have access to your site's content management system,
such as WordPress, then you should be able to do this. If your WordPress site has the Yoast plugin,
then there is a place where you can enter the code from the tag in Yoast.
If you have a different content management system you should be able to find instructions for that
or you could ask the person who manages the content of your website to do this.
The third and fourth options are good ones if you can use them, because they don't require
that you do anything except click 'verify'. You qualify to use one of these if you have either
Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager installed correctly on your website and you already have
either edit level permission for Analytics or publish level permission for Google Tag Manager.
The fifth method involves copying some text into the DNS configuration of your website.
This is another one where you may have to ask your web administrator for help. If you don't complete
any of these steps at this time then your progress won't be lost. You'll just see your site in this
menu under 'not verified' and you'll be able to complete the verification at a later time. Once
you have successfully verified, you'll immediately have access to the Google Search Console data.
Anytime you come back to this address your website will be listed here and you can click on it
to see the Search Console data. You'll also be able to link Google Search Console to your Google
Analytics as described in my blog post at website insights.net (see the address on the screen).
Thanks for watching. I try to make my articles and videos stand alone
so you can learn something from each one. There's always something more I'd like to
include but I have to draw the line. On my website you'll find more articles and videos
where you can learn how to use data to make online marketing decisions confidently.